Barbro Lindgren. Award Laureate 2014 1
(Sam’s Car), Max kaka (Sam’s Cookie), and Max nal
le (Sam’s Teddy Bear), all published in 1981. The books are brilliant in their humorous simplicity. They are a new kind of picture book, each telling a story of high drama in a child’s small world – in a language so deliberately fragmentary that some educators responded with protest. Here Barbro Lindgren provides us yet another example of her perfect pitch: not only does she speak with a child’s voice, but she also never fails to see the world through a child’s eyes. After eight books, Barbro Lindgren was ready to conclude the series. In 1991, she published Titta Max grav! (Look, Max’s grave!) in which little Max grows up, gets married, has children, gets divorced, and finally dies. It was all to no avail, however, as three years later Max was resurrected for two more books. Children’s loneliness The picture book Stora syster Lille bror (Big Sister Little Brother, 1992, ill. Eva Eriksson) is about two siblings who seem to be all alone in the world: we never see their parents, and we never learn the children’s names. Every night Little Brother starts to cry, and every night Big Sister has to comfort him. Helped by kindly neighbors, Little Brother always gets what he wants. The narrator’s voice is warm and funny, in spite of the fact that the story is about humankind’s existential solitude and our fundamental need for security. This theme returns in Andrejs längtan (Andrei’s Search, 1997, ill. Eva Eriksson), in which two small parentless boys escape from an orphanage in St. Petersburg and go looking for their mother. Serious games Barbro Lindgren is an author who offers us the unexpected. In numerous books, she has developed and explored the absurd in her writing. Among her most fiercely original are the three chapter books about life in the land of Barnhan, Vems lilla mössa flyger (Whose little hat is flying, 1987), Korken flyger (The cork is flying, 1990), and Vad lever man för (What-Are-We-Living-For, 2006), illustrated by Eva Eriksson. Their main characters are an old, ragged stuffed dog whose eyes are falling out of its head, a baldheaded teddy bear, an elephant and a Russian muskrat. The cast also includes a champagne cork, a marble, and a rubber monkey. Wistfulness, melancholy, and sorrow are counterbalanced here by vibrant